Work tools such as excavating buckets, shears, rake, etc. are commonly used by equipment and machinery in the construction and mining industries. These work tools such as excavating buckets have working edges that may contact work materials such as rock, stone, dirt, etc. that may cause the working edges to wear down over time, necessitating replacement of the working edge. For some work tools, this working edge may take the form of a base edge that forms part of the front lip of the bucket and that may be attached and detached using various methods such as welding, mechanical fastening systems. These base edges may themselves be protected by attaching wear members onto the base edge, covering the edge and protecting it from the wear caused by work material due to repeated motion and contact with the work material. The wear members may take on various forms including lip shrouds, tool adapters, tools, etc.
Different sized buckets are often used as needed for different sized machinery or equipment. It is typical for larger buckets to have a thicker base edge than the base edge used for smaller buckets. Due to the differing demand for different sized buckets, some accessories such as various types of wear members are available for the larger sized buckets but not for the smaller sized buckets due to a lack of cost justification. Users of the smaller sized buckets then are forced to forego the use of such wear members on their small sized buckets or to switch to a larger sized base edge that is compatible with a host of available accessories such as differently styled wear members.
However, the thicker sized base edge adds unnecessary weight to the smaller sized bucket that may be undesirable for a number of reasons including adversely affecting the balance of a smaller machine to which the bucket may be attached, requiring more power output by the motor of the machine, etc.